Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Lee Hotz of the Wall Street Journal discusses a lunch invitation with a Skua in Antarctica.

Here is another video/slide-show of my January trip courtesy the National Science Foundation to see the Science underway in Antarctica. I am planing 5 parts now, because I want to spend more time on the astronomy and climate science being done. My travel colleague Ann Posegate of NEEF is also working on a similar project and I’ll post her’s here as well soon.

This was all edited on my macbook pro. The pictures were taken with a Canon 400d and 500d dslr. Movies were mainly done on a canon sd970 pocket cam that shoots incredibly good 720p video. I also had a station camera that shoots in full 1080p. I highly recommend the little sd-970. Best video for the price I’ve seen. We used the video for the “on TV” pieces in many spots and you could hardly tell the difference!

So here is more of what I saw, and the people I met. Extraordinary people with one common goal.

Conducting science, while enduring the harshest climate, at the most remote location on Earth.

Image of me on sea ice near Cape Royds Antarctica by Chaz Firestone- Thanks Chaz!

One of the main reasons the NSF took Ann Posegate and I to the bottom of the world was to foster student interest in science. This was fine with me because it is one of the main reasons I write this journal and the Wild Wild Weather Page.

I’ve just finished putting together a 5 minute slideshow with embedded video about my January trip to Antarctica and the South Pole. I edited it using iMovie  on my Mac and added in some of the TV version along with some pics and more audio.  This is part one of 4. I used some of the first TV special we did along with some extra pics. The video is also on the Wild Wild Weather Page which is aimed at the younger crowd from age 9-14.

Hopefully it gives a good idea of what it was like to travel down to the ice. Ann is working on a similar presentation and I am working on part two now!

Teachers can get the file here. Classroom use only please, email me for any other use.

Lake Hoare and Canada Glacier in the Dry Valley's of Antarctica. Dan's pic.

One of the most fascinating places I visited in Antarctica was Lake Hoare Field Camp. It’s an amazingly beautiful spot. Some have claimed the Dry Valley’s of Antarctic are the most beautiful spots in the World. You won’t find me arguing with them.

Why are scientists are so interested in Lake Hoare??  It’s one of harshest climates on Earth. Cold and dry. Very dry. Perhaps one of the driest spots on Earth.

Click to read Greg Fish's post.

Life lives here though. It does so in surprising ways. This is of high interest to NASA, because they hope to send probes to such exotic places as Titan and Enceladus . If there is life on those moons far out in the Solar System, how does it survive? What does it run on??

What do we look for???

Most of the researchers at Lake Hoare are not atmospheric scientists, they are biologists and astro-biologists. They will tell you that nearly EVERY place on Earth we look for life, we find it.

Greg Fish has a great post on “Weird Things” tonight about this very subject. Check it out!

Sir Ernest Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds Antarctica. Mount Erebus, an active volcano in the background.

The only continent that humans did not naturally colonise is Antarctica. As I write this there are only about 250 people on the entire continent. They will be there through the long dark polar night. It will be spring before the New York Air Guard can fly a plane back in.

Robert Falcon Scott's hut is a 15 minute walk from McMurdo Base.

The first person to reach the Pole at the bottom of the world did so just 99 years ago. Having been there, I now have a deep respect for those who came first. Antarctica is a difficult and dangerous place in the 21st century.

The early explorers who survived there were more than just brave. They were shining examples of human curiosity and endurance.

You might think that all traces of their visits are gone now. Buried under snow and ice.

You would be wrong.

Food on the shelf. A century old. The Heinz logo has changed little!

These clothes have been hanging on to dry for a century. Two world wars, the moon landing, the new millennium. They hang still. The clock has stopped at 1907.

Antarctica is a frozen desert. It preserves well everything left there. There are two spots where you can literally walk through a door and go back 100 years. One is at McMurdo Base and the other is not too far away at Cape Royds.

A newspaper in Shackleton's hut that looks like it is a month old. It's over 100 years. My travel colleague Ann Posegate took the pic.

They are the huts built by Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Scott used the hut at McMurdo on his attempt at the Pole in 1910-1912. He reached it  a month after Amundsen. Scott  died with is men before he could return.

Shackleton never reached the Pole, but is a legendary figure for the rescue of his men after his ship became trapped and crushed by the ice. He sailed in a tiny boat across the most treacherous ocean on the planet to South Georgia Island. He returned with help and rescued every single man.

That journey remains the greatest “endurance” of  humans on record.

He is buried at South Georgia, where he died suddenly, on a future expedition.

Sir Ernest Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds

Shackleton's weather station. I had to have my pic taken here.

When you go into these huts, you walk into another world. A world that no longer exists except in history books and old pictures. Except it does still exist. It is right in front of your eyes. In colour, not an old yellowed photograph. You can touch it. You can smell it. You can feel it.

The cold and dry have preserved everything as Scott, Shackleton and their men left it. Under Shackleton’s hut they just discovered several crates of whiskey. It’s likely still good!

Interior of Shackleton's hut. Notice the hanging socks.

These huts are now protected places.

Permission is needed to enter them. Work is being done to make sure they are protected against the ravages of time and the curious. They are likely safe for a long time to come.

Very few people get this far South into Antarctica. Tourism for the most part is much further North along the Antarctic Peninsula.

I know that most people will never have the chance to stare out the same window that Shackleton looked through.

It was a humbling experience. No one who enters these huts leave them unmoved.

No One.

(Note: These pictures are for non commercial, educational use only. Any other use requires my permission.)

Click the image to see the return of the shoes (HD) before we departed Christchurch NZ for Antarctica.

When our first attempt at landing in Antarctica was turned back by weather, I found myself with a real problem. I had neglected to use a boomerang bag. All of your luggage is packed onto a huge pallet in the C17.  If you aren’t able to land, it stays there until you finally make it.

Now, If I had put my shoes in a boomerang bag, I would have had them for the 3 days we waited for the weather to clear!

Astrophysicist Kyle Story from the University of Chicago saved me! He loaned me some shoes!

Kyle was on his way to the South Pole Telescope. He  was one of a plane full of overachievers with me on the flight to Antarctica. We flew together again a few days later, to the South Pole itself. His research is fascinating and the science underway at the South Pole Telescope is trying to answer the very basic  questions of humanity.

How did the Universe begin!

I interviewed Kyle at McMurdo the night before we flew to the Pole. Kyle, and my travel colleague Ann Posegate of NEEF, had a couple of nice dinners with Kyle while we waited in Christchurch for good weather. Thanks for such incredible dinner conversation Kyle!

Right click on the video if you wish and watch it on YouTube in High Definition.